As school gets underway in West Virginia and across the nation, teachers welcome a new class of students. Unfortunately, many of those children are already behind.
A 2010 survey of 40,000 U.S. teachers commissioned by Scholastic Inc. and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that only 16 percent "strongly agree" that their students begin the year prepared for their grade level.
Teachers, then, are torn between bringing some of their students up to grade level, while preparing the rest for the next grade. As a result, for many students a high school diploma does not represent readiness for the challenges ahead.
According to the study, "nine in ten teachers said not all their students could leave high school prepared to succeed in a two- or four-year college."
So, why is public education underachieving and what can be done about it?
Opinions vary, but the teachers in the survey offered their own solutions, including the establishment of clear and common standards, ongoing in-classroom student evaluations instead of reliance on standardized testing, enhanced use of technology to aid instruction, accurate measures of teacher performance and closer parent-teacher relationships.
Interestingly, higher teacher pay was not among the solutions. Of course salaries are important, but the survey found that most teachers said having supportive leadership, collaboration time and high quality curriculum are more important to them than a bigger paycheck.
Meanwhile, another survey, this one by the National Center for Education Information (a private, non-partisan association that supports alternative teacher certification) finds teacher attitudes about how they are paid appear to be changing.
The 2011 survey shows that 59 percent of teachers now believe basing pay on job performance would strengthen education, compared with 42 percent just six years earlier. During the same period, the percent of teachers who believe basing pay on seniority strengthens education dropped from 74 percent to 65 percent.
Tenure remains a fixture in the public schools, but it’s not as popular among teachers as you might think.
The NCEI survey finds that only 32 percent of teachers want to get rid of tenure, but 90 percent do not want the policy to protect incompetent teachers.
The Scholastic Inc./Gates report revealed that tenure does not necessarily make for a good teacher. Only 10 percent of teachers said "tenure is a very accurate measure of teacher performance, while 42 percent said it’s not accurate."
Teachers are too often the easy scapegoats for failures in public education. The problems with the current model go way beyond the occasional bad teacher or lazy principal. We have a bloated education bureaucracy, shifting standards, burdensome paperwork, too little accountability, and multiple societal problems that mean children do not come to school ready to learn. On and on.
But, through it all, we also have gifted and hard-working teachers who will walk into the classroom this semester dedicated and determined to do their jobs despite a growing number of obstacles.
It’s a daunting challenge.